Today we tried another look for the maps. We used different Platform heights to make the tracks a little bit more interesting.

The picture does not show this very well. That’s why we created a little movie with a flight around the map. Another point we tested was the exporting of this camera motion path to use it for map intros and overviews.

At the end of the last week we planned the menu structure of the game. We already knew what we want to have in the game. A training mode so that the players can learn the game mechanics. A Timeattack mode to have the possibility playing the game alone. But the main point of our game is a local split screen multiplayer.

One of the main points this week was to test how to set up the production pipeline, especially for the creation of levels. Because Panda3D has an exporter for Maya, it was the obvious choice. We had to test all aspects of this part of the production pipeline. After some work we got the exporter up and running. The next question was, how to set up the level editor. So we tested maya as a level editor, so far its working great. Referencing and instancing in Maya makes later changes possible. We will use a tile like system to ease up the creation of maps.

The picture shows a top view of the first production test. Also we wrote some MEL scripts to make the creation of maps faster.

Now all platforms are in one height. Next week we will run a test to build a track with different platform heights. This should make the tracks more interesting for players. Also missing is a performance test of the track but therefore we have to build some bigger tracks first. Also the models are not really high detailed right now.

Don’t mind the texture. They are only for testing and we have to set up our art & style, before creating textures. A big part of the production pipeline is now tested. Before setting up the production pipeline, we have to define the scope of our game. But right now, some more tests are to be completed.

The Idea to this game started nearly a year ago. We had to collect some game ideas and then build a prototype last term. Our Prototype used a self made graphics engine. We lost a lot of time programming this engine. Now we decided to use a real game engine. After a week of discussions we chose Panda3D because it fits best to our game style and has a lot of useful features.

This week we start to use Panda3D and test all elements we want to use in our game. So far we could every thing we wanted, but it took us a while to get everything up and running. It’s not always so easy like it seems to be. We have nearly completed our test list this week.